Welcome to the Wild and Wooly World of JViewCVS.
IMPORTANT: Read Before Trying:
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This is only made to run on unix systems(only tested on Linux and Mac OSX).Where ever you install JVeiwCVS, that machine will need access to the CVS repository(cvsroot) directory.
Overview:
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I created this project because I couldn't get viewcvs-0.9.2 to work on my Redhat 8 or 9 machine. Up until 7.3, cvsweb and then viewcvs were working great on many a Redhat box where I installed them. Usually using Apache and setting up the cgi stuff.
For some reason I couldn't get either of them working on RH 8 or 9, cvsweb would give me rlog errors and viewcvs I couldn't get Apache to process the cgi file cleanly - python errors that I didn't have the time to figure out - also couldn't get symbolic links to work in Apache on RH 8 and 9.
Oh well, so I'm not the guru I hoped that I was - enter my solution, a cvs web viewer written in Java(JSP).
Installation:
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If you are familiar at all with Java web applications(JViewCVS is one of them) you need to install(or deploy) it on a JSP/Servlet engine. You also need a web server running to serve up the pages in the application.
Tomcat: Luckily, Jakarta Tomcat is an open source JSP/Servlet engine which also provides an HTTP web server. If you don't have another engine to use, get Tomcat from http:jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/index.html
1. Once you have this installed, cd into the jakarta-tomcat-x.x.x/bin directory and run startup.sh.
2. Use the tomcat documentation to make sure it is running ok.
3. Now run the shutdown.sh script to stop Tomcat
JViewCVS: You should have the jviewcvs.war file downloaded from sourceforge or other hosting site.
1. Copy the jviewcvs.war file into the jakarta-tomcat-x.x.x/webapps directory.
2. Run the startup.sh script in the Tomcat bin directory again.
3. This will start Tomcat and auto-deploy the JViewCVS web application.
4. You only need to edit one thing to get JViewCVS to look at your CVS repository: jakarta-tomcat-x.x.x/webapps/jviewcvs/index.jsp
In this file right at the top is a line similar to:
String cvsroot="/usr/local/cvsroot";
Edit the value of cvsroot on this line to point to your CVS repository.
You now have coded a line of Java for those who haven't before. You've created an immutable Java String object, I'm actually very happy for you :-)
5. Now surf to the same page you edited by pointing a browser at:
http://localhost:8080/jviewcvs
If you didn't change any Tomcat settings and you installed this on your own machine, then the above URL is correct. Adjust the URL if settings are different.
Usage:
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At this point you should see your CVS Repository directory tree and be able to click the directory and file names to traverse the files and view their CVS details as well as the files themselves.
A navigation set of links(similar to viewcvs) is provided to get back to the cvsroot if you have dug down into the tree.
If an error occurs, the web application error page is displayed - a simple message is shown, the gory details of the Java Exception are hidden in white text on the white background - just highlight the page text to see these gory details if you wish.
Todo:
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There is much to do as of the first version, if you fix something add to the RELNOTES.txt file in the docs directory of the project. Here is the list:
- alphabetize the listing of directories and files
- make it so directories always show up first.
- allow a file page to be reloaded in the browser, currently an error occurs.
- add to list of file types that get pre-filtered so as to show properly on an HTML page. Currently it only does XML, DTD, JSP and HTML files.
- add to the file listing page so that files show not only just their names,
but also thier most recent CVS version # and comment(a la viewcvs).
- I'm sure plenty of other things as well.